What do you think of Land Value Tax (LVT)

[helmuth_hubener]

The rest of your sentence says "...[T]he utter unworkability of such a system necessitates a single predatory monopolistic institution called the State be called upon to wisely preside over the management and distribution of all natural resources as Gods upon Mount Olympus."

The statement is demonstrably untrue. I have already demonstrated that its untrue, several times. Let me demonstrate once more. LVT merely taxes some portion of the market value of land. It is capitalists and entrepreneurs who determine the value of land and its capitalists and entrepreneurs who determine the allocation of resources from owning that land. Not the gods on mt. olympus. Not the predatory monopolistic state. We don't have bureacrats running around telling people what to do. None of that. The market sets the price of land and owners of land determine what they'll damn well fit do with the land.

Who determines the tax? Yeah, right, the market. Who determines what the market determined? Who determined to even determine the tax that way? Who collects the tax? To whom is it paid?

Oh yeah, I guess this is all just a free market capitalist extravaganza. No State involved in a land value tax at all.

Except for... the whole entire thing.

Resources to which the collective has claim, that is, which are collectively owned, are a disaster. So, Roy (and maybe you?) say we need to have the the state to step in with rules and legislation and an L.V.T. and everything is solved.

Why not instead allow it to all be divvied up, as humans tend to naturally do when they're intelligent? What is the advantage to keeping it, theoretically, collectively owned, and have the State, in practical reality, have ultimate ownership (they collect the rent and have veto power)?

You know, Richard Cantillon started his book looking at this question of "what would happen if the whole country was owned by one landlord?" as well as a lot of other stuff about land. He founded modern economics. We should bring Cantillon into the discussion. He had some good things to say.

 

[Roy L]

The government would not only refuse to enforce the privilege, but also refuse to recognize the privilege? In that case, does the government consider the land to be unallocated (i.e. no privilege of exclusive use has been granted to anybody)? If I pay the ground rent which you failed to pay, and I find you and your family working in the field, and I evict you all at gunpoint, then should the government recognize and enforce my privilege (which I lawfully paid for) to exclude you from the land?

If government is going to recognize your privilege even though you fail to pay the tax, then what's your incentive to ever pay the tax, except during the intermittent times when you happen to need the government's assistance in defending your land against my attempts to invade it and evict you?

Suppose that neither you nor I pay the tax, and the government therefore refuses to enforce or recognize any privilege of exclusive use. In this case, the government recognizes _everybody's_ right to nonexclusive use. Does the government enforce this right? If you live on the land and plant crops in the field, but I use the field for dirtbike practice and damage the crops, does the government defend me against your attempts to unlawfully evict me from public land? Or arrest me for damaging your private property (your crops), even though you don't pay the government anything? Or does the government just ignore us and the land, and leave us to work out our own problems? In the latter case, does the government continue to ignore us even if one of us is killed during our gunfights, if we aren't bothering anybody else?

You make good points in this post, jascott. IMO Matt's view that non-payers would not be evicted if someone were willing and able to pay for exclusive use of the site is highly problematical. There is no way to allocate exclusive possession and use of land but by force, and that, according to George Washington, is what government is. It is pointless to evade that fact.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

No, because the private market can't invest efficient amounts in public goods.

Is it still your position that roads are a public good? Or are you willing to admit you were wrong when you wrote that? Maybe you "misspoke" like our lovable buddy Herman Cain so often does. Would you be willing to admit even that maybe you misspoke (miswrote)?

 

[helmuth_hubener]

I just thought I'd point out my fascinating position (it's total lie, of course, but still fascinating) that when you transform matter in some way, you have "removed it from nature" as the Georgist contingent phrases it. Changing its location would be one transformation, one that passes muster under Roy L.'s Catechism. But changing it without moving its location, as for instance tamping down the earth for a parking lot, that is a transformation, too. The tamped earth is no longer in its original natural state. It took quite a bit of capital and knowledge and labor to get to a point where you're steamrolling over dirt.

Let's go further and say you make a traditional capital product, one that the LVT Pope would normally recognize as duly baptized into holy propertization. Like a chainsaw. But you make it without ever moving the resources from their original location. What would be an example where that would be actually possible? How about a statue carved in place right at the deposit of marble or whatever, such as, aha!: Mt. Rushmore or Crazy Horse?

My guess is that the Papal verdict that will issue shall be that the lando---r (cursed be his name, cursed be his name) may own the statue itself forever and ever, although if his LVT is ever overdue, he will need to move it to some other location.

If I have, indeed, correctly anticipated His Holiness's reasoning -- presumptuous of me I know, I shall smite myself for it and say ten Hail Henry's -- then it is appearing to turn out that the "land" which is being taxed under the One True Faith boils down to be locations on the Earth's surface. It is all about space, not about matter. You can own matter, any matter, so long as you shuffle it around. Just move it somehow. You're good to go then. Your title then has been blessed by the Pope and is true and faithful. But one can never, never, never own locations at the surface of the Earth. Those be sacred. They shall not be sullied by the profane hands of aspiring lando---rs. Their pride and loftiness shall be thrust down just as Lucifer's.

 

[MattButler]

You make good points in this post, jascott. IMO Matt's view that non-payers would not be evicted if someone were willing and able to pay for exclusive use of the site is highly problematical.

Hey hold on there good buddy. I may have written something haphazardly that led you to believe that, but that is not my view. Willingness and ability to pay the market clearing price determines right to exclusive possession. And in such case mere users and homesteaders can be removed by the State. Let me say as practical matter, perhaps in many areas of the country, there would be no privately owned land and no great competition to own land. You would have a space for people to go that wanted no taxes and no State interference or basic services. They could live very freely. They would be isolated and there would be no real police protections for them out there. No roads and such. However, lets assume they had a small farm crop, and a citizen from an LVT community then came in and maliciously destroyed the crops, just to spite them. What happens then? Where does this anarchist individualist go? May he sue the guy in tort for damages? Should he be entitled to a hearing in the offenders own court of law? I might argue Yes. Despite the fact he pays no taxes to that community, does not even live there or in any way support that community, it might make sense to do this. Reason is that the community does not want its citizens doing such things. They risk alienating and infuriating the outsiders living in those places, who might then target citizens of the community. By providing a forum to redress such grievances, the Court then seeks to discourage bad behavior by its own against outsiders.

I think some people have this idea that all the land is being rented from the State. I don't see it like this. I take position that land is trading on the market of exchange and changing prices and so forth and prices and values are fairly transparent to the market. The tax assessor's role is merely to determine that value and collect tax from the lawful owner. I take position that it should be done once a year, no exceptions. However several owners throughout the year may be apportioned their share of the tax for that year.

Why do you think multi-year leases, such as a 5 year lease, would be necessary?

 

[Roy L]

A man dying of thirst stumbles across an unlocked jeep loaded with an abundance of bottles of water. He reaches in to drink from a bottle when he hears a revolver being cocked behind his ear. "You have two choices," says Harry. "Die of thirst, or die by gunshot. And BTW if you choose the latter, I'll sue your heirs for the cost of the bullet." Dan, the dying man, chooses to do the honorable thing: refrain from trying to steal the water, and instead die of thirst, and save his heirs the cost of the bullet.
You really claim Bottleowner Harry isn't violating Dan's rights?

I do. Such behavior is very nasty, and there are probably laws against it in most places ("refusal of aid in an emergency" or some such), but Harry hasn't violated Thirsty's rights. It's a bit like animal cruelty: such behavior is so nasty that we have laws against it even though it doesn't violate anyone's rights. There was the recent case in China where a toddler was struck by two vehicles and passersby ignored her. Did the passersby violate her rights? I don't think so. But their behavior was likely illegal, certainly disgraceful, and probably caused her death. It just didn't violate her rights.

If you deny that Bottleowner Harry is violating Dan's rights, then you must also claim that God doesn't exist, or at least that God didn't command that man is his brother's keeper (which certainly includes "give him a drink of water to save his life if you have an abundance"), or at least that man's laws, giving Harry unconditional ownership of (and therefore the right to keep) his bottled water, override God's laws, which require Harry to give water to Dan.

IMO man's laws, which depending on the jurisdiction probably require Harry to give Thirsty a drink, are more compassionate than nature's law, which gives Harry property in the water and no responsibility for Thirsty's predicament.

If you acknowledge that God exists, then do you claim that he doesn't authorize man to own land (or at least to own land without paying LVT to a central government)? Or if he does authorize it, then does the basis for your denial of man's authority to own land lie outside the chain of authority stemming from God? In the latter case, are you really claiming that, although God exists, not all authority stems from him?

I doubt that it is fruitful to talk about God's role in this issue.

To the athesists, I just ask: where does authority come from?

The facts.

Majority vote?

That's just the way democratic institutions are controlled.

Does all authority stem from one root, or are there multiple roots?

Depends what you mean by "authority."

My point is that the stated disagreements of the participants in this thread might stem from disagreements about more fundamental, unstated premises.

Possibly. I have demonstrated that Helmuth does not believe in the equal individual human rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of one's labor, while I do.

 

[Roy L]

I would.

And if you believe that, I have a bridge for sale, cheap.

Everything that can be owned, should be owned.

Like the alphabet? It would be trivial to make it into private property, sell it off to those who could afford to bid billions per letter, and then require those who use each letter to pay a royalty to its owners. If you think that making the alphabet into private property would yield any kind of benefit to anyone but greedy, evil rent seekers, you are a fool.

The owner of an orchard also owns the "air rights" to clean healthy air above his land (assuming it was clean and healthy when he bought the place).

But only by legal convention, a convention that could easily be altered to enable private appropriation of the atmosphere -- which you claim SHOULD be made into private property.

If a new factory comes in and starts polluting the air and all his trees are dying, he can bring a tort, and force the factory to cease aggressing against his property, the air around his trees.

A tort? Wouldn't that require a government that recognizes his right to use the earth's atmosphere even though he doesn't own it?

Lowering everyone's air pressure is obviously just an even bigger tort.

But only against landowners, I assume...?

 

[helmuth_hubener]

A tort? Wouldn't that require a government that recognizes his right to use the earth's atmosphere even though he doesn't own it?

He does own it. An air right is a property. Just like a water right or a mineral right.

 

[Roy L]

Of course it does.

No, it doesn't. It only taxes deprivation of resources imposed on others by initiation of force.

I should have written "Both the resources used to build and also to maintain and operate them -- concrete and metal and whatever -- are taxed, back when they're in the ground, because the value of those resources is a component of the land's value." But I didn't realize there'd be any confusion.

The confusion is yours. As already explained, only the rent of a resource is taxed, so LVT does not increase its cost. Any rent not recovered by taxation will just be pocketed by the resource owner, and any resource that yields no rent can be used without paying any tax. So in either event, LVT CANNOT increase the producer's cost.

But is it not also undesirable for rich people of all and sundry types to "profit extraordinarily", according to the masses? Why are the masses wrong, except for about... wait, do I say natural resources or land to you? In what sense are you using "land"?

Answer MY arguments, not the arguments you claim I am making on behalf of the masses.

Because in economic terminology, of course, the "resources" we were discussing earlier -- ore, concrete, etc. -- are land.

Concrete is a product of labor and therefore not land. You know this.

Except for that they're not, because they can't afford the LVT.

Yes, of course they can, because LVT can't exceed the market rent, and by definition the market rent is a price someone is willing to pay.

Yes, and housing vagrants is probably not a very efficient or high-value use, is it?

It is if no one else wants to use the land enough to be willing to pay anything to use it.

You're focusing on irrelevant details.

You're talking silly nonsense.

I wrote that post in a parallel structure for a reason, to make it clear the parallels between factories and land.

And you failed.

There's no philosophic difference between the matter and space we call "factory" and the matter and space we call (layman's) "land" that makes one ownable and one not.

Yes, of course there is: the fact that owning land violates others' rights, while owning a factory does not.

They both consist of matter, which has been rearranged to an extent by man.

By definition, land has not been rearranged by man.

They both occupy three-dimensional space. The matter in both can, in theory, be moved. They both should be ownable.

The matter in the land HASN'T been moved, and is therefore not rightly ownable.

How does one measure such a thing?

By the degree to which it follows the two most fundamental and widely accepted principles of sound tax design: "ability to pay" and "beneficiary pay."

Is there a badness meter we can use to empirically prove or disprove your theory?

You could also refer to Smith's "Canons of Taxation," if you were interested in understanding anything about taxation.

Some would say a low general tariff is the least bad. Others would say a poll tax.

And they would be objectively wrong.

Others, like myself, would say that the most important thing to realize about taxes, all taxes, is that they are nothing but an institutionalized crime -- extortion -- and must all be abolished.

It is landowning that is an institutionalized crime -- extortion -- and must be abolished, as already proved:

The Bandit

Suppose there is a bandit who lurks in the mountain pass between two countries. He robs the merchant caravans as they pass through, but is careful to take only as much as the merchants can afford to lose, so that they will keep using the pass and he will keep getting the loot.

A thief, right?

Now, suppose he has a license to charge tolls of those who use the pass, a license issued by the government of one of the countries -- or even both of them. The tolls are by coincidence equal to what he formerly took by force. How has the nature of his enterprise changed, simply through being made legal? He is still just a thief. He is still just demanding payment and not contributing anything in return. How can the mere existence of that piece of paper entitling him to rob the caravans alter the fact that what he is doing is in fact robbing them?

But now suppose instead of a license to steal, he has a land title to the pass. He now charges the caravans the exact same amount in "rent" for using the pass, and has become quite a respectable gentleman. But how has the nature of his business really changed? It's all legal now, but he is still just taking money from those who use what nature provided for free, and contributing nothing whatever in return, just as he did when he was a lowly bandit. How is he any different now that he is a landowner?

And come to that, how is any other landowner charging rent for what nature provided for free any different?

Murray Rothbard, while never endorsing an LVT, thought LVT was a horrible idea and was incompatible with a free society.

I have demolished Rothbard's anti-LVT "arguments" utterly.

True. It's nevertheless useful to remember or realize that the same factors that apply to other kinds of taxation apply to LVT.

No, they do not. Unlike other taxes, a tax on the rent of a factor in fixed supply cannot, repeat, CANNOT have any excess burden -- i.e., it cannot make society poorer, only those who pay it (and others will be equivalently richer). That is a fact of economics that has been known for 200 years. It is merely a fact of economics that is not known to you, because you do not know any economics.

The two I mentioned were: "you can only squeeze your host for so much or else he dies",

The full rent of land can be recovered by taxation, and economic activity -- production and exchange -- will not be impaired one iota. It is only if government attempts to take MORE than the full rent, via a more than infinite ad valorem LVT rate, that harmful effects are possible; and government has no motive to impose a more than infinite rate, as that would only reduce revenue.

and "all taxation is a drain on the economy". By its nature, taxation transfers wealth from the economic class, society, to the political class, the state. That is what LVT does.

It is the landowner who is the drain on the economy. He is a pure parasite. Government, by contrast, is a producer that provides services and infrastructure for which people are willing to pay -- willing to pay even landowners, who do not provide those services and infrastructure.

Are you OK with that? Do you think it's OK for that group of parasites we call the state to rob society?

It is landowners who are parasites and rob society. Land value is identically equal to the minimum value of what the landowner expects to take from society and not repay in taxes.

Then why not just use user fees?

In most cases they are not efficient, as they discourage low-marginal-cost, high-marginal-benefit use.

So then the landowners are paying for it all -- all these beneficial things -- and they are the ones deciding what to spend, managing the process, and keeping oversight on things. I see the advantage to this, I see what you're saying, and it's the right idea. But why not take it all the way? Why set up a crazy monopolistic system with use of aggressive force as a primary mode of operation?

There is no way to allocate exclusive use of land but by force. It is impossible.

Why not just have landowners voluntarily pay in order to obtain these various benefits for the general welfare?

Once upon a time, all the taxes were paid by landowners, and only landowners could vote. Problem is, the first thing those landowners voted for was to make someone else pay the taxes.

Voluntary is good. Aggression is bad.

How is initiating force to deprive someone of their liberty "voluntary"? How is it not aggression?

 

[Roy L]

He does own it. An air right is a property. Just like a water right or a mineral right.

He does not own the earth's atmosphere, stop lying. What he owns is a bundle of rights defined by law, which includes use of the air that happens to be over his land.

 

[Roy L]

The lecture is making the claim. Explicitly. The lecture is saying "feudalism made the modern world".

It is saying no such thing.

By saying that that is not what the lecture is saying, you are bizarrely mistaken.

Then let's see the quote where it says feudalism created an economic miracle. I certainly didn't hear any such thing, and it is wildly implausible on economic grounds.

You should instead furiously explain to us where Ralph Raico is wrong, where he is lying, and where he is evil. You should tell us what a worthless human being he is. You should not pretend that he is a human being with any virtues whatsoever who is not arguing that feudalism had a lot of good points. He clearly is arguing that feudalism had a lot of good points. Just concede that point.

<yawn> Where does he say feudalism caused an economic miracle, unprecedented wealth production, blah, blah, blah? Where? He points out that the church, being international and recognized as higher than secular authority, acted as a check on the excesses of feudal rulers, which is certainly true. He points out that democratic governance of independent towns and cities not covered by feudal regimes played a central role in the emergence of a more productive post-feudal economy, which is certainly true. But for the most part, he is not even talking about feudalism, but about the emergence of post-feudal institutions. If there were any actual quote in that lecture that supported your claims, you would have provided it by now.

 

[Roy L]

I said a built factory is already there. You said it is not. I said again that it is. You again say "no". Your position is inexplicable. A factory which has already been built has, umm, already been built. Part of the nature of already being built is something we call "being there". Existing. An existing factory exists. That's all I'm trying to say. Can you admit that you were wrong when you wrote that an existing factory was not already there?

In that case, what you are offering is just an equivocation fallacy. When I said the land is "already there," I meant that it was there before the owner, and was not contributed by the owner or anyone else. You just want to use a different -- and completely irrelevant and uninformative -- sense of "already there" in order to remove my sense from the discussion. Anything that is taxed is "already there" in your idiotic and deceitful sense of the term. Income? Not taxed unless it's "already there." Sales? Only taxable when they are "already there." Capital gain? Has to be "already there."

See how easily I prove your "arguments" are ridiculous and dishonest?

Already asserted many times. You have your definition, I have mine;

And yours is a fabrication designed to evade the facts.

you have your economists, I have mine.

Please provide a quote from an economist who claims the supply of land is not fixed.

Whose are better? That would be mine.

If the goal is to evade the self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality, that is.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

The confusion is yours. As already explained, only the rent of a resource is taxed, so LVT does not increase its cost. Any rent not recovered by taxation will just be pocketed by the resource owner, and any resource that yields no rent can be used without paying any tax. So in either event, LVT CANNOT increase the producer's cost.

Well that's a lot of fine mumbo-jumbo, but it is not what Matt was saying. It contradicts what Matt was saying. His point was that the resources which built and maintain the factory have already been taxed by the LVT, so taxing the factory qua factory would then be a double-taxation.

Answer MY arguments, not the arguments you claim I am making on behalf of the masses.

This wasn't your argument, it wasn't your post, and I did not claim you were making any argument on behalf of any known masses. To the contrary, I would claim that you are not.

Concrete is a product of labor and therefore not land. You know this.

The stuff that makes concrete is land. That's what I meant.

Yes, of course they can, because LVT can't exceed the market rent, and by definition the market rent is a price someone is willing to pay.

Well, it could. The State can set it at whatever it wants. That's the great thing about being a State. Of course it would be irrational for the State to do that. The State does irrational things on occasion.

On frequent occasions.

Yes, of course there is: the fact that owning land violates others' rights, while owning a factory does not.

I could just say that owning the factory violates humanity's rights. I could make up some bogus reasons why this is the case -- wealth redistributionists do this all the time. These reasons would be just as valid as your reasons that owning land violates others' rights: not at all.

By definition, land has not been rearranged by man.

True. I was saying that the land, by being rearranged -- e.g. tamped down -- has become non-land. It's been delandified.

The matter in the land HASN'T been moved, and is therefore not rightly ownable.

See my post 744. The evidence is mounting that your definition of "land" is purely locational.

You could also refer to Smith's "Canons of Taxation," if you were interested in understanding anything about taxation.

Smith was a moron. Smith was wrong about almost everything. To read anything more by Smith would be self-torture. The guy was a fruitcake.

It is landowning that is an institutionalized crime -- extortion -- and must be abolished, as already proved:

The Bandit

And, you proceed to prove it, such as you know how. There is a key difference in the bandit, the tax collector, and the land-owner. The landowner can be avoided by the merchants if they just buy up their own land and build a different road. The bandit, by contrast, will just move to whatever road is being used. The tax collector will also just move, or maybe just make it illegal to travel by any road but that one. Only the landowner respects the property rights of the traveling merchants. He does not force them to pass through his land.

I have demolished Rothbard's anti-LVT "arguments" utterly.

You have not even read all of them.

No, they do not. Unlike other taxes, a tax on the rent of a factor in fixed supply cannot, repeat, CANNOT have any excess burden -- i.e., it cannot make society poorer, only those who pay it (and others will be equivalently richer). That is a fact of economics that has been known for 200 years. It is merely a fact of economics that is not known to you, because you do not know any economics.

Yes. they. do. Yes. it. can. Smith. was a. moron.

It is the landowner who is the drain on the economy. He is a pure parasite. Government, by contrast, is a producer that provides services and infrastructure for which people are willing to pay -- willing to pay even landowners, who do not provide those services and infrastructure.

Let me just repeat the same things over and over and over and maybe everyone's minds will be so numbed they'll agree with me via either induced vegetation or psychotic break.

It is landowners who are parasites and rob society. Land value is identically equal to the minimum value of what the landowner expects to take from society and not repay in taxes.

Society != the State.

There is no way to allocate exclusive use of land but by force. It is impossible.

Defensive force is OK. Aggressive force is not. Force of any kind is only needed if someone like yourself is trying to aggress and take land which is not his. Then defensive force should indeed be used to repel him/you.

Once upon a time, all the taxes were paid by landowners, and only landowners could vote. Problem is, the first thing those landowners voted for was to make someone else pay the taxes.

Like my iPod's stuck on replay, replay, replay, replay....

This is, of course, historically inaccurate.

How is initiating force to deprive someone of their liberty "voluntary"? How is it not aggression?

It is. But they don't have liberty to use everything in the Universe. So when I deprive them of that make-believe liberty, I'm still good; still on the up-and-up.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Then let's see the quote where it says feudalism created an economic miracle. I certainly didn't hear any such thing...If there were any actual quote in that lecture that supported your claims, you would have provided it by now.

Well you also claimed he never even used the word "feudalism".

I gave you the time markers. One of them has your answer. I'm not your transcriptionist.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

You just want to use a different -- and completely irrelevant and uninformative -- sense of "already there"

It actually was pretty relevant. It also happens to be "the sense" in which "already there" actually means "already there". So, it's got that going for it.

 

[SpiritOf1776_J4]

The best tax is not a sales tax, but imposts and duties. They are like sales taxes, but they are indirect since they aren't levied on specific people or purchases, nor inside the States themselves but imports.

This is how most of our taxes were raised before the income tax. It's enough to pay for all of government. It has the added advantages that most of the cost of a well running limited federal government is probably going to be defense, so it also ties taxes directly to what is causing the cost of government. There is a lot of traditional arguments and historical basis for this - lost since the progressives took over and have been trying to establish taxes as a way to get rid of property...

Beyond that, I'd like to get rid of taxes altogether, and go to a truly voluntary system.

 

[Roy L]

Incorrect.

No, I am quite correct.

You simply justify theft by deeming it okay when the state does it.

No, that is simply another lie from you. It is the landowner who is guilty of theft, as already proved, and it is YOU who attempt to justify that theft. LVT REDRESSES that theft. You are essentially saying that if a man steals a car, and the police recover it and return it to its rightful owner, then it is the state that is stealing, not the thief. That is a stupid lie.

You have it entirely backwards.

I have proved my statements are objectively correct.

You have not described a natural law at all-just a figment of your imagination.

This whole thread demonstrates the validity of the law. Every single poster who has tried to justify landowner privilege has lied. Every single one.

You are just an apologist for the Statists' lies.

I am not the one who claimed land is produced by labor. I am not the one who claimed feudalism produced an economic miracle. I am not the one who claimed that taking money and contributing nothing in return is productive labor. Lying apologists for landowner privilege are.

 

[Roy L]

It actually was pretty relevant. It also happens to be "the sense" in which "already there" actually means "already there".

No, it is only one of them, stop lying.

So, it's got that going for it.

It is a way for you to evade the relevant facts, so it's got that going for it.

 

[Roy L]

The best tax is not a sales tax, but imposts and duties. They are like sales taxes, but they are indirect since they aren't levied on specific people or purchases, nor inside the States themselves but imports.

This is how most of our taxes were raised before the income tax.

No, it isn't. Most US taxes before income tax were levied on land and real property.

It's enough to pay for all of government.

It was never enough, even when government was much smaller, and it impedes economic activity.

It has the added advantages that most of the cost of a well running limited federal government is probably going to be defense, so it also ties taxes directly to what is causing the cost of government.

??? Nope.

There is a lot of traditional arguments and historical basis for this - lost since the progressives took over and have been trying to establish taxes as a way to get rid of property...

Progressives want to get rid of privilege. You just refuse to know the difference between property and privilege.

 

[Roy L]

Well you also claimed he never even used the word "feudalism".

Post the quote, or admit you are a lying sack of $#!+.

I gave you the time markers. One of them has your answer. I'm not your transcriptionist.

ROTFL!!! You have been caught in another lie.